China's and India's growth, along with that of Korea, which placed No. 12, are partly due to declining online costs in those countries, NSI officials said in a statement yesterday.

For example, in India, the government late last year opened channels for privately run Internet service providers to compete in offering lower cost dial-up Internet connections, NSI officials said.

India, China and Australia replaced the Netherlands, Hong Kong and Japan in the top 10, moving them to the top 15, NSI said.

The U.S. still leads in domain name registrations by a wide margin, accounting for about 73% of all registrations for the three names, NSI said.

The number of new international registrations totaled 230,000 in the first quarter of the year, up from 168,000 in the previous quarter. The 230,000 represent growth of 135% over the 98,000 international registrations in the first quarter of last year, NSI reported.

"Growth in international registrations proves once again that 'dot com' is one of the few phrases understood in every language on earth," said Doug Wolford, NSI senior vice president.

Following the U.S., the top 15 countries in .com, .net and .org registrations are as follows:

1. Canada

2. United Kingdom

3. France

4. Germany

5. Sweden

6. Spain

7. Italy

8. China

9. Australia

10.India

11.The Netherlands

12.Korea

13. Hong Kong

14. Japan

15. Turkey

NSI didn't list the total registrations per country, except for the U.S., which had 4.2 million as of the end of March.